Tuesday, February 15, 2011

As I
mentioned yesterday, Scott Baker reportedly experienced
some setbacks in his rehabilitation after his offseason elbow “clean-up”. While
on with Sid Hartman and Mike Max this past Sunday, Ron Gardenhire included that
nugget in his diatribe regarding why he doesn’t believe the Twins are looking
to trade Francisco Liriano. To me, this seemed like a fairly noteworthy news
tidbit yet nothing was covered in the press on Monday.

“The right-hander said that it was right after TwinsFest, which
took place Jan. 28-30, when he realized that perhaps he was going a little too
fast with his preparation for Spring Training. Baker stressed that what he felt
in his elbow after throwing a couple bullpen sessions was nothing like what he
felt last season, when he needed two cortisone shots in the second half to
continue to pitch. He was assured by the trainers and doctors that the
discomfort he was feeling is not uncommon following surgery and Baker said he's
not concerned about his elbow heading into the start of camp.”

Any sort of
discomfort is disconcerting – for pitchers going through rehab, no news is good
news. Likewise, this close to spring training it is strikingly reminiscent of
the plight of Joe Nathan in 2010.

After the
2009 season, Nathan opted to have surgery to remove bone chips
in his elbow. This past season,
after some nagging injuries with his elbow, Baker decided to have surgery to remove bone spurs.
Essentially, bone spurs are simply bone chips that have not fully broken off
from the source yet. As I
discuss last March when news regarding Nathan’s need for Tommy John broke,
bone chips/bone spurs are sometimes generated by a loose UCL (the ligament that
snaps and requires the TJ) and an early indicator that something is not sound
within the elbow structure.

In both
cases, Twins GM Bill Smith regarded both surgeries as “clean-up”. Nathan’s, of
course, parlayed into something much more significant than a simple “clean-up”.

In his
rehabilitation process in the next spring, Nathan began to have issues that
were initially written off a common for someone going through the same process.
Following an incident in the first week of March in which he said he was
experiencing pain and was being sent back to the Twin Cities for a closer
inspection, Nathan
relayed this to the media:

"They said with this type of operation, you're going to
have days where it's not going
to feel great. There's going to be tightness in there, achiness in there, and
it may be scary.”

That’s
basically the exact same thing Baker was told, only in different words.

Aside from
Nathan, numerous other pitchers who have had bone spurs removed often run into
the dreaded Tommy John or some other UCL repair shortly thereafter:

In July 2007,
Oriole closer Chris Ray was placed on the 15-day DL with bone spurs. Not long
after that, Ray had surgery to remove the spur and Dr James Andrews noticed a
minor tear in his UCL and repaired it. The following month with pain still continuing,
Ray decided to undergo
Tommy John surgery.

In the same
year, Cardinals’ ace, Chris Carpenter encountered arm pain that was sourced to bone
spurs in his elbow in April. In May, Carpenter had those spurs removed. Two
months later, Carpenter underwent Tommy John.

In my
opinion, Baker may be the key to having a successful year out of the rotation. With
Liriano scheduled to be the number one guy and Carl Pavano as the
innings-eating complement, Baker’s got the necessary skill set to be a number
two starter. In the past three seasons, his high strikeout-low walk rates have
led to an outstanding 3.39 K/BB (11th-best among active pitchers).
His downfall had been his high flyball tendencies (45.6% fly ball%,
third-highest in that time) which resulted in plenty of home runs (71 to be
exact since the beginning of ’08). Fortunately, the Twins have built a ballpark
that plays to his strengths (minus the outfield personnel to cover the ground,
but still…) and Baker performed admirably there – posting a 3.86 ERA in the local
confines.

Blessed with above
average stuff, we can see how the influences
of these types of lingering injuries can affect his pitching, so if he’s
healthy, Baker is plenty capable of being a 15-game winner on the staff
(provided the prerequisite defense and run-support). Now, it seems to be a
wait-and-see game with Baker. Hopefully, the decision to ease up on the
throttle will prevent any major damage to his elbow and winding up following
the same path as Joe Nathan did.

About OtB

"Parker Hageman is the Michael Cuddyer of Twins bloggers -- not the flashiest guy out there, but a solid everyday player. Hageman produces spot-on analysis ... relying on in-depth stats and lots of charts. He takes a sober, performance-based view of players, letting others fall for a player's heart or his leadership skills in the clubhouse. Hageman is one of the four pillars holding up the Star Tribune's TwinsCentric blog."